Target, Still Targeting Wal-Mart

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Target (TGT) is trading up 4% pre-market after posting higher earnings. It showed $0.75 EPS, up from $0.63 the prior year and above the $0.71 estimates; revenues were $14.04 billion, up from $12.86 billion last year and a hair under the $14.17 billion estimate.  The company said same-store-sales for the quarter came in at +4.3% for the quarter.  What is interesting is that the company did not show formal guidance for the next quarter or the year in same-store-sales nor in earnings.

What is interesting is what Bob Ulrich, Target’s Chairman & CEO, said: "Our overall performance reinforces our confidence in our ability to continue to generate profitable market share growth for the full year 2007 and many years to come."

"Market share growth" for "many years to come" doesn’t exactly sound like they are going to try standing in place, nore does it sound like they are going to back off of their onslaught against Wal-Mart (WMT-NYSE) and others.  Target stock is up 4% at $60.50 in pre-market trading, still short of the $64.74 52-week highs.  There is no sizeable trading pre-market in Wal-Mart.  We’ll follow up with guidance if there are any real changes that develop out of the conference call.

Jon C. Ogg
May 23, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.   

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

DELL Vol: 42,366,555
NTAP Vol: 15,911,807
NOW Vol: 68,243,561
IBM
IBM Vol: 28,527,546
HPE Vol: 86,996,387

Top Losing Stocks

CTRA Vol: 73,319,495
CLX Vol: 4,744,001
RMD Vol: 3,526,686
INTC Vol: 191,680,425
SWKS Vol: 5,407,806